


a rush of blood to the head

by but_seriously



Series: Bingo Bangers [3]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Wearied Marrieds, lmao sorry i think i'm hilarious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24637777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/but_seriously/pseuds/but_seriously
Summary: “Come home,” is the first thing he says. The second: “Did you really charge five different hotels to my account? How much of a head start did you think that would give you?”or: day four of the klaroline june bingo: "do you hate me now?"
Relationships: Caroline Forbes/Klaus Mikaelson
Series: Bingo Bangers [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1780807
Comments: 6
Kudos: 119





	a rush of blood to the head

**Author's Note:**

> written for the klaroline june bingo for the prompt "do you hate me now?"; also posted on my tumblr: highgaarden.

They are, of course, in the other room.

Footsteps come in thundering booms and you might think the thump of a body will follow, a scream, a well-pronounced curse, but Caroline emerges with her bags packed and hat firmly veiled over her curls, and she announces, quite calmly, that she is leaving.

“Where is the screaming?” Rebekah wonders in, quietly appalled, “The orchestra, the pallid strings? The cracked lightning of Nik’s head against a broken mirror? _Where are the broken mirrors?_ ”

“Sister dear,” Klaus coos from his spot in the corner of the room, “do shut up.”

“Can you all just be _reasonable!_ ” Rebekah stands in the middle of the room, waves her spatula around—she’d been in the middle of making Christmas dessert, for God’s sake—and points a berry-stained finger at Caroline. “You. Throw something.”

All Caroline does is check her lipstick in the still-whole mirror, and all Klaus does is draw, and it’s quite different than the cacophony she usually bears witness to, the hoarse throats and the thirsty crying and the bloodshed, all the blood. Caroline gives herself an appraising nod, Klaus flips a page, and Rebekah, well. Rebekah wants to yell.

“Someone needs to be yelling!” Rebekah yells.

Caroline flicks Klaus a glance. He’s looking back at her rather witheringly. Caroline smiles, “Good bye, you old lard.”

“I hope you remember how the door works. It _shuts_ after you leave.” Klaus’ returning smile is an easy one, and he stands, offering her his hand. “Do you need change for the cab?”

As expected, the jibe is ignored. Caroline ruffles his hair in a show of fondness. “Get yourself a decent haircut for once, alright?”

And then she’s gone and so is her perfume and the oven dings and Klaus goes back to his seat, and the music in the room keeps crooning something chirpy and sweet. There is no crescendo, there is no crash, there is just the sound of the door shutting after Caroline leaves.

—

“You are a bloody fool,” Rebekah says, resetting the table for two. Klaus puts a cut of turkey in his plate, humming under his breath, but his jaw is clenched and the silverware gripped in his hands look a little bent. “You God awful, bloody, _bloody_ fool. What the hell did you do now?”

The silence stretches to fill the room and Rebekah hardly touches her dinner, her _perfectly_ cooked roast, the glistening plum and raspberry jam, the light _biscuit jaconde_ Caroline always loved layering with dark chocolate. She sucks her wine through tightly pursed lips, placing upon her brother a gaze so severe the clouds outside scatter.

Klaus slops wine into his mouth, chews furiously on his dinner, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He returns her gaze in kind, and the town shivers around them.

At long last, quietly, miserably—

“Must it always be me?”

—

“And must it always be _me_ ,” Rebekah sighs, “the most amazing sister you will ever have, to give you lessons on how to court _your own wife._ ”

Klaus, biting through the neck of a brunette, mutters something incorrigible, which Rebekah elects to ignore on account of him being an idiot. She blows a piece of hair out of her face and taps her foot impatiently until Klaus is quite finished. It isn’t long before Rebekah gives him a thorough dressing down, pushes him out the door to go and threatens eviction, and he exclaims, “It’s my bloody house!”, but pretends he hasn’t already booked his flight tickets.

When Caroline swings open her hotel room she isn’t surprised to find Klaus there, scowl on his face that matched her own.

“Come home,” is the first thing he says. The second: “Did you really charge five different hotels to _my_ account? How much of a head start did you think that would give you?”

“I will not,” is her first response. And her second: “I was just in the middle of packing, actually.”

But she steps aside and he follows her in, her perfume dizzying, and he realizes with a strange despondency that she’s changed it without him realizing. He pauses just inside the room, leaning a shoulder against the wall, and watches her. Her hair is longer, falling down her shoulders when she leans over her suitcase, but it still held the same curls, moonlit and magicked, he used to say, the way they always caught the light. Suddenly he sees her same her sopping with blood, matted to her cheeks, his hands pushing them away clumsily, his lips searching, his body hungry—

—and he says, voice thick, “You’re beautiful.”

If Caroline is suspicious he doesn’t blame her, because he had forgotten, and he doesn’t know how he can possibly forgive himself, especially when he notices the bracelet she’s wearing. And he can’t stop himself then, surging forward to wrap a hand around her neck, to press his forehead against the soft cushion of her curls. “I’ve fucking missed you.”

Stiff in his arms she does nothing to push him away, and she sounds puzzled when she says, “It’s only been three days, asshole.”

Mouth still buried in so much _her_ , he says, “You know what I mean.”

She still hasn’t moved. Klaus closes his eyes to the hotness building in them and his hand roves from her neck to the notches of her spine, the slope of her back, coming to rest on her hip. His other hand he uses to bring her fingers to his lips, a soft graze of a kiss. And then he sways her.

“What the _hell_ —“ Caroline falls into step with him after initial clattering of her heels, “—are you doing?”

“Dancing with you,” Klaus replies.

Caroline frowns. “Why?”

Klaus sighs. “I’m trying to romance you.”

There are about a dozen questions in Caroline’s eyes, he can see: she’s angry, she’s confused, she’s resigned, she’s—she’s nodding, and she’s resting her head on his chest. “I do like to be romanced.”

“And I do like to romance you,” Klaus says. He closes his eyes to the press of her body against his, “I just – forgot. How to. When to.”

“ _Please_ tell me this isn’t your entire apology,” Caroline mutters, and he chuckles then, though it sounds thick, clogged and wet in the back of his throat. The urge to kiss her is sudden and suffocating.

“Caroline,” he says, and then changes his mind. “Love,” he decides, and nods – it sounded better, and if his senses weren’t deceiving him he feels Caroline melt easier into his touch. “I’m sorry I’ve been—“

“—a total dick,” she interrupts. “An absolute asshole, a nightmare to share a bed with, when you’re even there to _share_ a bed with—“

He tries again. “I got caught up in—”

“Things that totally do not concern our marriage—adding to New Orleans’ already alarming body count, for example—”

“—business cropping up that required attention—“

“—away from me, and I’ve been _nothing_ but supportive—“

“And overbearing,” he reminds, “and bloody difficult to be with as well—“

“Only because you stopped loving me,” she hisses, and there it is – the cracking in his chest, the clenching of his heart.

He asks, suddenly, desperately, “Do you hate me now?”

“Klaus…” Her eyes shutter and she exhales slowly and definitely. It strikes him in the gut the way her shoulders sag, but not from relief, when she says, “I had to _do_ something, do you know how terrifying, how all-encompassing it felt to share a bed with a stranger every night? I’ve had—this isn’t the first time…” she’s having trouble looking at him now, blinking rapidly, “You stopped loving me.”

“Never,” Klaus says harshly, pulling her so close there is no telling where she ended and he began, “Don’t you dare think that.”

“But I did,” Caroline says so sadly, and her eyes are so big and so wet and he feels the same welling inside him as well, and he can’t help it anymore: he kisses her, tastes the salt of her unshed tears, tastes the blood on her tongue and the syrup of her teeth, the sharp of them. He kisses her with the heat of a fever, feeling the same dam breaking inside him. They fall into bed, him on top of her, her suitcase upsetting itself onto the floor, her hands in his hair, his heart entirely not his own anymore. She cries into his shoulder and he holds her, cries with her, a bittersweet relief seeping from him, regret and remembrance and denial and defeat crushing his insides, but when she lifts her head and looks at him through tear-crushed lashes, when she smiles at him, he feels his heart returning, he feels a yearning for home, for her.

“I love you, Caroline,” he says, burying it with a kiss.

“And don’t you forget that,” she says, or she threatens, but it sounds so sweet coming from her.


End file.
